Downtown Las Vegas nightlife venue, hotel to open briefly for gaming

A downtown Las Vegas hotel and nightlife venue will bring back gaming – for two days only.

Gold Spike and Oasis Hotel and its gaming license holder, Las Vegas-based Fifth Street Gaming, was approved for a temporary, two-day non-restricted gaming license during a Las Vegas City Council meeting on Wednesday.

Seth Schorr, CEO of Fifth Street Gaming, said Friday the two-day gaming is expected to occur on Sept. 30 through Oct. 1. He didn’t specify how many slot machines are expected to be on site.

In recent years, Gold Spike has operated without gaming. But operators have kept the license active thanks to a quirk in Nevada law.

A 1992 Nevada law requires that new non-restricted licensees in highly populated counties, like Clark County, should be resort-hotels, defined as having at least 200 rooms, a permanent bar that can hold at least 30 customers and a 24/7 restaurant that can seat at least 60. But non-restricted licensees who obtained their permissions before the law was enacted have a grandfathered status.

That grandfather status can expire if gaming is absent for more than 24 consecutive months, Michael Lawton, senior economic analyst for the Nevada Gaming Control Board, said.

A brief period of gaming on site is what keeps the property’s license active. That’s key for the operators of Gold Spike, who have had the property on the market for about nine months.

The property has been on the market for an undisclosed asking price since December 2023, according to brokerage firm Logic Commercial Real Estate’s website. The two adjacent properties have 130 rooms, a bar and nightlife venue.

Gold Spike first opened in 1976 as the Rendezvous, a 112-room property. It’s had several owners since, including Casino magnate Jackie Gaughan between 1983 and 2002, and the Siegel Group, which purchased the property in 2008. Fifth Street Gaming managed their gaming operations.

The late Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh bought the property in 2013 for $22 million as part of his side venture, an effort to revitalize downtown Las Vegas called the Downtown Project. He died in November 2020 at 46 from injuries suffered during a Connecticut house fire.

Contact McKenna Ross at mross@reviewjournal.com. Follow @mckenna_ross_ on X.